Rover End Effector
June 2025 - Ongoing
As part of my contribution to my robotics team, RoboNAV, I have been leading the design of our new rover's end effector. The design features 5 fingers: two with rotary actuation, two with parallel actuation, and one with completely linear actuation. This variety of geometries allows us to pick up a range of different objects in ways that are optimized for their particular shape.
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The design heavily considers weight savings, as it is the furthest from the mounting point of the shoulder. The bulk of the design is FDM printed, while thin aluminum plates are used to provide structure where it is needed. Additionally, the use of helical gears and globoidal worm wheels allows for the gears to distribute their loads across more teeth and are thus printed out of resin isntead of made from steel.
Skills Developed
Complex Assemblies: How to organize to handle a build with over 60 components (excluding fasteners).
Gear Design: How to design gears for best torque transparency and load distributions.
Data-Driven Design: All design decisions and scaling were validated by hand calculations I did myself.
Weight Saving: What strategies were taken to ensure the lightest build while preventing part failures​.
Kenesto: Part sharing and cloud-based file storage.